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This paper aims to present a new framework that describes the relationship among market entry order and timing, the advantages accruing to first-movers and late-movers, entry timing premium (ETP), marketing strategy and enduring market performance of the firms. The framework, empirically tested using data from 241 business executives, expands extant research into new territory beyond first- and late-mover advantages in an attempt to reconcile a few streams of research in the area and provides an entry related, strategic assessment tool (ETP) for the managers. Contribution to marketing strategy theory and managerial implications are also presented.

Participants included informants in a firm’s strategic business unit who were the most familiar with a new product’s commercial launch, market condition at launch, competitor offerings, marketing activities and capabilities and eventual integration into or withdrawal from the product’s portfolio. Therefore, for the survey, the study targeted chief executive officers, vice presidents of marketing or sales, product or sales managers, general managers and regional managers. Both preference bias (Narus, 1984) and survivor biases among the respondents were addressed.

The research result of this study reveals two very significant aspects of marketing and marketing strategies. First, the importance of financial, pricing and cost strategies further attests to the fiercely competitive nature of the global market today and the tendency for firms to commoditize most products and services. An effective financial and pricing strategy, coupled with a higher level of ETP, is capable of leading a firm to initial market success in the product-market in which it competes. Both ETP (a positional advantage and resource of the firm) and financial and pricing strategies (a deliberate strategic decision of the management) are important to achieve this goal.

This study is limited in several ways. The effects of entry order and timing on market performance could be dependent on the types of industries and types of product categories involved. However, as the hypotheses were well supported, the “industry specific” factors would provide “fine-tuning” in the future study. Second, the nature of the product (goods or services) may also present varying effects on the relationship studied (for differences between manufacturing and service firms in pioneering advantages, see Song et al., 1999). Services’ intangible nature, difficulty in protecting property rights, high involvement of boundary-spanning employees and customers, high reliance on delivery and quality, and ease of imitation may alter the proposed relationships in the model and the moderating effects. Third, although this study used a “retrospective” protocol approach in the data collection by encouraging respondents to recall market, product and business information, this study is not longitudinal. Lack of longitudinal data in any study involving strategic planning, strategy execution and the long-term effects is no doubt a weakness. In addition, due to peculiarity and complexity with regard to regulation and other aspects in pharmaceutical and other industries, the theory might be limited to a certain extent.

In all, the integrated framework contributes to the understanding of the intricate issues surrounding first-mover advantage, late-mover advantage, entry order and timing and the role of marketing strategy. The framework provides practitioners guidance as to when to enter a product-market to gain advantageous positions and how to maintain that advantage. Firms that use a deliberate late-mover strategy could also benefit from the research finding in mapping out their strategic courses of action.

This study believes that the halo effect surrounding first-mover advantage may have obscured the visions of some researchers and managers, and the pursuit of a silver bullet has led to frenzied interests in becoming a “first-mover” or a deliberate “late-mover”. The theoretical framework, which is substantiated by empirical testing, invalidates the long-held claim that entry of a particular kind (first-movers or late-movers) yields any unique competitive advantage. It is a firms’ careful selection of marketing strategies and careful execution of the strategies through effective operational tactics that would lead to enduring competitive advantage, under an adequate level of ETP.

This article aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the late-mover advantages and disadvantages of China's futures market.

This paper reviews the establishment and evolution of China's futures market via historical and comparative analysis, deeply analyzing the market's late-mover advantages and disadvantages.

The establishment and evolution of China's futures market as a late-mover enjoys benefits in overall design, pilot, and post-development. However, it also suffers disadvantages brought by institutional transformations, advantage enjoyment, catch-up strategies, and international integration.

This paper is the first to systematically explore the laws affecting the formation of the price system in China's futures market. The findings of this research provide important policy implications for the development of China's futures market and references for other developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether being a first‐mover into the Chinese market through strategic alliance with host companies provides competitive advantages to the foreign entrant. The aim is to understand the relevance of the first‐mover and internationalization process (incremental learning) for competitive advantage in China during environmental uncertainty. Thus, the author proposes that the first‐mover (foreign firm) would be able to deflect environmental uncertainty, such as the economic recession of 2008, by forming an alliance with Chinese enterprises earlier than its rivals.

Quantitative methods for data analysis were used in support of the proposition. The sample comprises 187 foreign multinational enterprises that entered into the Chinese market through strategic alliance with local partners. The dependent variable is return on assets (ROA) of the firm. The author used the timeline as the independent variable. The longer duration implies earlier entrants on the temporal scale. The author also used several controlled variables at the firm level, industry level and national level of the home country. The analysis was based on ordinary regression.

The result supports the main hypothesis in favour of the first‐mover advantage. Apart from the main effects in the hypotheses, there are some interesting alternative effects captured in the control variables. It appears that age of the firm tends to hamper firm performance. Industrial discretion is another control variable. The author predicted a positive coefficient. However, the result is not significant. The result shows competitive forces can lead to a better performance for the first‐mover. This observation is counterintuitive because monopoly is the source of performance, and competition reduces monopoly. It should be negatively correlated, but the result shows the opposite. In this sense, competition appears to be contributing to the firm's performance. A possible reason is that firms compete in the downstream of the industrial value china in established industries. Hence, the first‐mover advantage supports the early entrant in competitive conditions. Licensing mode of governance is negative. In comparison to alternative modes of governance, it appears that contractual mode such as licensing is less conducive for better performance. Firms that entered into IBA in China after her membership with WTO performed lower than those entered before WTO. Home country's R&D spending has not shown significant and positive influence on the performance.

The author proposes that cultural distance needs to be included in the research and analysis for a better understanding on the phenomenon of first‐mover advantage. Second, the research needs to be replicated in other contextual settings. China is indeed a big market. However, there are multiple different institutional systems in the world. Third, it will be interesting to identify the late‐mover's advantage so that policy decisions can be made in comparative terms.

This paper is different and novel in two ways. First, it reveals that companies that had entered into Chinese markets were able to deflect some of the losses caused by the global slowdown. It means that internationalization can be both positive and negative. It is negative because global crisis can adversely affect almost all economies. However, it can be positive when some economies are stable, and the firm has entered into that stable market earlier than others. Second, the research reveals that cultural and institutional distance can be a positive source during an economic crisis. The author can see today (in 2012) that similar economies of the west are still struggling to get out of the recession of 2008.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the stock price reaction to the first announcement in SEC filings of the enactment of corporate governance guidelines. Agency and management theories suggest the enactment of guidelines should create value for the owners.

The paper uses an event study methodology on a sample of 141 firms.

The research finds only a few firms exhibited a significant reaction. Overall, the data were not significant. Searching for first‐ or late‐mover advantages was also unsuccessful. However, the increased enactment of guidelines (bandwagon effect) supports first order imitation possibly due to the board interlocks found. The results indicate two possible explanations. First, SEC filings may not be a strong signal for the overall market resulting in a potentially unrealized stock value transferred to those few who act on the signal. Second, the value of the guidelines may be unclear to investors. In either case, more public disclosure (i.e. greater transparency) for the adoption of corporate governance guidelines may resolve the issue.

This paper provides valuable information on the value of corporate governance guidelines.

The purpose of this study is to explore market entry strategies in a high-tech successive generations (HTSGs) market, by investigating entry mode via entry timing and path differentiation and the performance outcomes of entry mode.

The methodology of building a theory from a longitudinal case study is adopted by using useful cases in a HTSGs market after constructing an integrated research framework to explore market entry mode. Different entry modes were investigated by studying entry timing and migration path of three firms’ case in logic semiconductor market. In addition, performance outcomes of different entry modes were measured and correlated with each other.

The results identified three major entry modes suitable for a HTSGs market. The three firms differentiated their entry modes by exploiting different entry timings from the earliest to the last and different migration paths including switching, leapfrogging and new entrance path to enter a market. First mover advantage also exists in a HTSGs market, and it was found uniquely that the financial performance denoted by entry mode outcomes was correlated with technological knowledge.

This study extends the theory of extant entry strategy from general consumer or industrial market to HTSGs market, in which intense competition exits and technological innovation is important. Moreover, this study verified that the causality between early entry and positive performance was also effective in HTSGs market with a shorter duration of early entry advantage.

This study has managerial implications for firms to establish market entry strategy in HTSGs market and other markets. To become a product leader, a fast follower or a late follower, firms can differentiate their entry mode by adjusting the entry timing and migration path in the context of market and technology.

This study examined market entry strategies suitable for HTSGs market based on its unique characteristics and extended relevant theory into HTSGs market. Further, an integrated research framework, which explores the market entry mode, was constructed to facilitate further exploration of entry mode into other markets.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the first-mover decision as one decision of a set of strategic decisions that ultimately determine performance.

The author used survey data collected from foreign-invested firms in Sichuan, China, to test for evidence that first-movers perform better than late-movers.

The results reveal that there is a first-mover advantage when the other strategic variables are not included in the model. When the entire set of strategic variables is included, however, the first mover variable loses its significance and the willingness of the foreign partner to commit additional resources becomes the best predictor of performance. Consequently, it was argued that foreign investment strategies should be analyzed as a set of strategic decisions managers make to formulate the best mix.

The empirical evidence for the first-mover advantage may not be as well grounded as many have thought. When the first-mover strategic decision is analyzed in isolation from other strategic variables, which is commonly done in many empirical studies, it indicates that firms that enter China before their competitors perform better. Unfortunately, it is more logical to assume that managers dynamically develop a set of strategic decisions that ultimately determine the firm’s performance. To extrapolate one static decision from the strategic decision set and make broad assertions about its effect of performance is an over-simplification of the strategic decision process.

Using Amazon.com as a case study, the present research explores first mover (dis)advantages in e.commerce. It examines whether or not Amzon.com has sustained early mover advantages. What are these advantages? And how has Amazon.com reacted to late movers? Evidence generated from the case study suggests that the maintainability of first mover advantages in e.commerce depends on three main factors: continuous innovation, speed of implementation and patenting.

The objective of this paper is to determine whether international entry‐order strategies by Korean chaebols affect the exit of their foreign subsidiaries.

The sample consists of a set of 61 parent firms and their 500 foreign subsidiaries. The sample includes 27 Korean business groups, called chaebols, and spans 51 markets, during the period from 1999 to 2004. The study employs resource‐ and knowledge‐based views, and is based on the Cox's proportional hazard model.

This study leads to two main findings: in the context of Korean business groups, latecomers in international markets have greater survival rates than pioneers do because latecomers have stronger resource commitments; and, nonetheless, if chaebol pioneers have greater competitive advantages than chaebol latecomers, the pioneers' subsidiaries have better survival rates than do those of latecomers.

The analysis advances order‐of‐entry research by exploring the international order‐of‐entry strategies of chaebol multinationals and their impact on international exit and the interrelationship between the order‐of‐entry and core competencies of chaebol multinationals.

A appreciable number of exporters have successfully developed their markets in foreign countries although they have little prior experience in those countries. Advocating that indirect learning plays a crucial role in explaining this phenomenon, the purpose of this paper is attempted to investigate whether and how learning indirectly from competitors and interfirm relationships enables exporters to successful expand their business into foreign markets.

Drawing on the knowledge-based theory of the firm and the late-mover advantage theory, the authors developed an empirically testable model that explains and predicts the effects of indirect learning on the success of export market expansion. The model was tested using a complied archival data set in regard to exporters’ market expansion events and international accounting. The sampling frame was the events of Korean exporters’ market expansion.

Empirical evidence shows that exporters’ indirect learning from domestic, local, global competitors and from interfirm relationships influence their success of market expansion. In addition, indirect learning from domestic rivals and from interfirm relationships has a more positive effect on the success of expansion into emerging markets than into developed markets.

Because the authors employed an event-study method, the limitations of this method can be applied to the present research. In addition, because of the empirical context, the results of the research may lack generalizability. The authors, however, provided an understanding how an exporter can succeed in a foreign market specifically when it has lack of direct experience in the market.

The results of the current research suggested that an exporter should try to learn from local, domestic, and global rivals experienced in a foreign market in order to succeed in the market. In addition, exporters should be affiliated with business groups or partnerships because these affiliations can strengthen the information-sharing mechanisms. Moreover, an exporter should focus first on learning from local rivals and then domestic rivals in order to develop proper expansion strategies. Finally, an exporter should attempt to more actively learn from rivals and interfirm relationships when it targets an emerging market than a developed market.

Prior studies have emphasized the effects of a firm’s direct learning on market development success. The authors, however, filled a knowledge gap of the impacts of learning in two aspects. First, the authors provided an understanding of the effects of indirect learning on market expansion success. Second, the authors demonstrated these effects in the context of export.